THIS WEEK’S PROGRAMMES

Eden — Paradise Lost C4, Mon-Fri

Utopia — In Search of the Dream BBC4, Tue

In Search of Arcadia BBC4, Wed

Secrets of Silicon Valley BBC2, Sun

No need to dust down your Sartre: hell is still other people. This is the basic takeaway from Channel 4’s great shambolic experiment, Eden, which finally got a proper airing last week. Twenty-three strangers, nominally adults, were sent to live in the remote Scottish Highlands for a year, with limited supplies and no contact with the outside world. A first broadcast surfaced in July 2016, then the show promptly vanished, amid rumours of savage behaviour and, worse still, audience indifference.

And I have to say I did greet this return, five episodes stripped across the week, with a huge, so-what sigh. The “social experiment” is a tired trope of TV, where we put various strangers together in a room, lock the door and stroke our…

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